Feb 9, 2014

Gallic games generally get a rough ride outside their native France - the spectacular Cinematique adventures of Delphine being something of an exception. Originally on the Amiga as Another World (the name it'll eventually come to the UK under), it's now available for the PC on import and looks sure to win a whole new set of fans...

INTO THE PLANET OF THE APES (WELL, NEARLY...)

1. Clinging to a submerged piano(!), Lesmust reach the surface before the tentacles close in!

2. Made it! You've escaped the squid,but it's a bit of a case of out of thefrying pan into the fire...

4. Much later on: Les is now in controlof a tank-like thing, driving 'round some sort of Roman arena!

GOOD, BAD OR UGLY?

It's difficult to classify Out Of This World - nothing quite like it has appeared on the PC (or, indeed, any other console) before. The recent Prince of Persia (see Player's Guide this issue) is perhaps it closest cousin, but only because both games feature brilliant life like animation, and main characters that take a fair amount of getting used to to control. It's not just working out how to get our hero to do something that's tricky here, but when: it's a limitation of this graphics system that it leaves a slight time lag between you telling the guy to do something and him actually doing it. This isn't always a problem, but there are points in the game (the bit where you're trying to dodge falling rocks, say) where you'll need to know his reaction times well enough to compensate, or things will start getting very annoying indeed.

Still, that aside this is gread fun. Out Of This World is playable, enjoyable, very more-ish, and I prefer it to the original Amiga game - mainly because the superior PC Soundtrack really helps build up the atmosphere. Music is used very effectively here, changing pace to suit what's happening on screen, and conveying the feeling of tension brilliantly. Sound used to complement story so well is something of a rarity. True, this version is slower in places (the Amiga is simply a faster machine at handling polygons), but not so much so that it becomes unworkable. Otherwise this is very similar game to the Amiga one, with few graphical changes.

A nicely presented, involving cart, then, but (you guessed it) there's one big problem, and that's the lack of long-term playability. This game simply isn't going to last you a long time. To complete each section, a repetitive trial and error approach has to be adopted - there's no other way to do it - and to make this sort of mucking around acceptable, frequent passwords are given out. The problem this creates, of course, is that with only 14 sections to get through, and so much user-friendliness, you'll finish it in no time. Whether you buy or not depends upon your priorities - it's a lovely game, and a delight to own, but good value it ain't.